


mercy

by eastern_wind



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Tragedy, Blood and Gore, Character Death, F/M, Graphic, M/M, Post-War, sorry pals sasuke has to go
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-16
Updated: 2019-01-16
Packaged: 2019-10-11 07:52:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17442887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eastern_wind/pseuds/eastern_wind
Summary: both of them are dying and she can only save one





	mercy

**Author's Note:**

> tw: what it says on the tin

Pain is neverending. A vicious eye of the dying moon still stares down on a slowly waking world when the news is out.

The war is won.

The truth lies heavy on the chests of survivors as both understanding and grief catch up to them. The war might be won, but they are the ones to live with the consequences. Homes lost, lands barren, names forgotten - it happened already, not once, not twice. It will happen again because such is human nature: the war is won until another one comes round. It goes unsaid amidst of chaos, as it always does.

The war is won, but far away another fight goes on. Where love and hate are nothing but powerless words in the eye of the storm, the crimson thread of fate is about to be severed at the place where all things end. Where it all began ages ago.

A man and a woman run at the top speed they can muster in their state for hours and it still seems too slow, too far away. This fight, it is not theirs, but has it ever stopped them?

They are late, be it his inborn cursed luck or her inherited one, they are again the ones to pick up the pieces.

The night is thick and tangible around them as the moon dies, bleeding into faint whispers of a new, peaceful dawn in the east. The shapes blur and shadows crease like ink on a wet paper, curling around the growing pool of black blood. None of the two pay it enough attention to read a premonition written there.  

They have seen enough to know, the hardest part is yet to come.

“I can't save them both, Kakashi,” she says and her voice trembles with loss. Uneven green light springs from her hands and dances on the glinting surface of starting to coagulate blood, throwing reflections around. They look like fireflies dancing on her scarred by acid skin.

She has to choose now. There is no one but her capable of making this decision. The only question is how she is going to live with it.

There is Kakashi’s hand holding her steady as she lifts the battered scraps of what once was an arm. Right now he is just Kakashi because the war took more than all their faith and strength, it wiped out ranks and stole their sense of time passing. They dove into this war as an absentee teacher and a scared not-yet-kunoichi. They surfaced battered and breathless when it came to a close - as equals.

She could probably say she feels old, twenty two and field-promoted jōnin blurred on her barely intact ID after so much dimension-jumping and bathing in various bodily fluids of still dying and already dead. But in reality she feels

nothing.

There's a hand on the small of her back and fourteen years between them, but they came through war that took its toll on them both and in the pale moonlight they look ancient and crumbling like charred remains of ulna in her lap.

“Then don't,” is all he says.

The words that sound so simple fall from his masked lips like stones and something shatters between them - the wall of misconceptions and well-crafted lies crumbles, leaving the two alone with their shared pain. The smile - an ugly mask of her own - is bitter because he has always been the one to know it well before she did, saw through her when she was too young and stubborn to understand.

He knew how it will end well before it began.

She doesn’t seek his approval, not now and after all they’ve been through. Light blossoms on her fingertips, brighter than anything they have seen in these last months. The moon - so small when it doesn’t fill the sky anymore - is crying bloody tears above them as green envelops her and the body lying on her left. She places ulna back to where it belongs gently, almost fervently and her eyes roll back as black lines dig into her face and torso, threatening to break her with its inhuman grip.

She howls when her skin splits open and bloody tears - her own - roll from the corners of unseeing eyes down her cheeks, coloring crow’s feet that weren't there five months ago with red-red-red. She is a porcelain doll bound by steel of her seals, her surface cracking under pressure where it's the thinnest, but she also is the strongest of her generation.

She is unstoppable and even death bows before her, scuttling back into the shadows.

It is her decision and it’s final.

New skin, pale and tender, thrums with steady heartbeat where crumbling bone once was.

“Done,” she whispers hoarsely as the green around her fingers flicker for the last time. She is truly and absolutely spent. Her chakra system is nearly burnt out, the Strength of a Hundred seal is empty save for a few last drops that still keep her awake in spite of blood loss and weeks long lack of sleep.

Her face will be forever marred by the fast lines of faded ink, but there is a rumble shaking the ground and with it what once was called the being of malice and hatred is reborn. It rises, glorious in its might, and settles back into the body of its host to finish what she started.

They leave the demon to it and turn to watch their traitorous teammate pass away.

The moment stretches as more blood spills from cracked open mouth even though the one she leaves to die is blessed with unconsciousness. It is too much, his wounds are too deep this time and she just went through the war, giving all she had to save thousands of people and almost resurrect one. She doesn't have any power left for the other and he, if let live, can destroy the world.

She almost died from his hand back there, in that another life of hers, the life of before. Five times, five chances given. She used to believe… Now she knows better.

She is kneeling beside him and there's emptiness in her eyes.

“You and I both know the village won't accept him no matter how Naruto tries, Sakura. And I can't blame them.”

I won't too, is left unsaid, echoing between them.

She knows she _can_ do it, repeat Chiyo’s final bout and surrender her life - what's left of it - in exchange for his and maybe she should, only…

There's a hand on her back and it grounds her. The war is won and soon they will rest and grieve, but before that - they have to make sure it lasts.

“Mercy,” she offers, even though they both know it is not. Never is.

 

The life leaves Sasuke in a slow trickle, ebbing away with his labored breathing. His heartbeat picks up, but falters once, twice. Then his eyes, one blood red, the other muddy gray, open in his last futile attempt to make his lungs work.

He looks at where Naruto is lying, at gory mess of what once been his own hand and at Naruto's regrown one and shudders violently. Slowly, through excruciating pain that threatens to overcome his body, he moves to meet Sakura's bleak, tired eyes. He knows he is going to die, deserves it more than anyone, but he wants-wants-wants to feel Naruto's warmth one last time, to bask in his light before he's gone.

The man beside him is still, but breathing and somehow it is enough. Must be enough.

The madness boiling in Sasuke's veins demands his blood.

How could it all go so wrong?

Kakashi kneels by Sakura's side, hand sliding absently to her waist, and the distance between the two screams louder than any words ever could. Lines blur in times of war, don't they?

Sasuke feels her cold hand linger in his torn wide open by Rasengan ribcage and a grim smile distorts her features as she cradles his stuttering heart in her palms. She has never been the one to kill easily, but she also knows what would happen if he survives. She is not taking that risk, not after all the pain he had caused them, so he does the only thing he can offer as a parting gift.

“Mercy,” he breathes out one last time and

smiles.

**Author's Note:**

> This story is part of the LLF Comment Project, which was created to improve communication between readers and authors. This author invites and appreciates feedback, including:  
> Short comments  
> Long comments  
> Questions  
> “<3” as extra kudos
> 
> This author replies to comments. If you don’t want a reply, feel free to sign your comment with “whisper”, I sure will be happy to receive it, but won't respond!


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